


The Baandari Pedlar

by ktyxdovahkiin



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Discrimination, Elsweyr, Hammerfell, Khajiit (Elder Scrolls), Redguards (Elder Scrolls), Ta'agra, Writing Prompt, baandari pedlars, jailbreak, prison break - Freeform, wandering litter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23081257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktyxdovahkiin/pseuds/ktyxdovahkiin
Summary: Written for a "jailbreak" writing prompt.An adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's "Kabuliwala" ("The Man from Kabul"), for the Elder Scrolls universe.The Baandari pedlars are a group of nomadic Khajiiti merchants that travel all over Tamriel to sell their wares. They live by a code of conduct known as the "Baandari Code," which states that loose items are rightfully salvageble, the peddlers must indulge clients in prophecies they want to believe in, and guarantee them of a product's utmost value and versatility. They consider themselves the "wandering litter" of Baan Dar, the Bandit God of southern Tamriel. Some describe them as evil spirits incarnate and have the notion that their merchant activities are just a cover for their thievery and fraud.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	The Baandari Pedlar

_Do not slander another child of the Baandari._   
_Remain mindful in all dealings._   
_A gift must be returned in kind._   
_A fair trade need not be fair only in gold._   
_Truth and cleverness need not be enemies._   
_Find what is lost, trade what is found, and leave what has no purpose._   
  
_\- The Code of the Baandari_   
  


My daughter Kimiya is getting married today. I remember how she was as a little girl - she took only one year to learn how to talk, and since then a torrent of words has come forth from her lips. Truly, she has not wasted the gift of the tongue that has been given to her; she is a bard, a teller of tales, a singer of songs. Ah, but today… today she was silent. My cherished Kimiya! She was speechless, for a change. Ah, my old heart aches within me this day.

I think it was when she was seven. Not more than eight, surely. I was preparing the final batch of textiles to be delivered to the Ash’abah camp when she ran into the mill and came to my side. “Mother!” she cried. “Basri calls Bird Goddess Tava ‘Kynareth’. He doesn’t know anything, does he!”

Before I had a chance to educate her about the multiplicity of religious beliefs across Tamriel, she brought up another subject. “Mother, Nabar says I won’t ever be as good as Makela Leki. I know more of the Book of Circles than he does! He’s just sour that my grip is stronger than his. He teases me, he keeps teasing me. I’ll be a much better Ansei than he can ever be, won’t I, Mother?”

Without waiting for my opinion on this matter either, she suddenly asked, “Mother, what relation is Father to you?”

“A very good question,” I thought to myself, but to Kimiya I said, “Run off now and play with Nabar. I’m busy.”

But she did not. Instead, she went to sit on a bale of cotton and began loudly reciting the Maxims of Frandar Hunding at the top of her voice. I rolled my eyes and continued directing my workers, to the accompaniment of her loud declamations regarding the Oblation to Onsi and the Purifying Beverage of Kotu.

Suddenly, she stopped, jumped off the bale, ran to the window, and pointed. She shouted loudly, “A Baandari! A Baandar pedlar!”

It was, indeed, a tall, lanky specimen of the Wandering Litter, dressed in dirty travel-worn clothes, with a red and gold headpiece and several boxes of wares strapped to his back. I could not begin to say what thoughts the appearance of this Khajiit had put in my daughter’s mind, but she greeted him with the greatest enthusiasm. That cat’s gleaming smile spelled danger, I thought; with my eyes I motioned to my foreman to go and watch the treasury box. With his approach, strangely enough, Kimiya gasped with sudden terror and ran off. I believe she harbored a strange fear that the Baandari would steal her and sell her somewhere far away.

The Khajiit came up to our threshold and made obeisance. “This one is weary from the sun,” he said, “and would beg the indulgence of some shade under the eaves of your fine roof. Also, Khajiit has wares, if you have the coin, kind roofmistress.”

He had some boxes of Samar Pekoe. I bought a few. Then we chatted for a bit about the latest attempts of Anequina to secede from the Dominion. When he got up to go, he asked, “This one would ask, was that girl earlier your daughter? Where has she gone, this one wonders?”

To dispel Kimiya’s groundless fears - the Baandari steal all manner of things but have never been known to traffic in live chattel - I called her out from behind the warehouse. The Baandari took out a pouch, and offered her a pinch of sweet Moon Sugar, but Kimiya clung tightly to my work trousers and hid behind my legs.

Thus passed the first meeting between Kimiya and the Baandari pedlar.

A few days later, when I was overseeing the setting up of a new loom, I looked out and found my daughter sitting and chatting in an unrestrained manner with the Khajiit, who was grinning and gesticulating animatedly as they spoke. I think in all her life, Kimiya had never found so ready a listener as the Baandari cat, and certainly no interlocutor half as interesting, ready with a story of his own for every anecdote of hers. I also saw that she had been duly bribed with handfuls of nuts and berries. I said to the pedlar, “Why have you given her so much? Don’t give her anymore.” And I took out some septims from my waist-pouch to pay him with.

He unhesitatingly took them from my hand. I went down to the town square to conduct other matters of business, and returned home to find a full-blown row; my husband was standing in our house and holding up a few septims. He said crossly to Kimiya, “Where did you get these? Have you been stealing?”

“The Baandari pedlar gave them to me.”

“What Baandari? One of those mangy thieving cats? Here?”

“He’s a very nice old cat! He would never!”

“Why did you take these from him?”

“I didn’t,” Kimiya said tearfully. “He gave them to me himself.”

I stepped in and rescued Kimiya from her father’s wrath, and then sat down with her for a proper talk. I discovered that this was not just the second time they had met - in the intervening days between his first arrival and the encounter I witnessed today the cunning feline had contrived to win his way to my daughter’s heart by dint of little edible inducements. By this time he had quite won her over.

Over the next few weeks they developed their own little jokes and routines. Kimiya would ask quizzically, in a high-pitched singsong, “O Baandari, Baandari, what have you got in your boxes today?”

And he, whiskers quivering comically, would say something along the lines of, “A woolly mammoth from Skyrim!” The notion of such an outlandish creature in his peddling crates was a source of immense hilarity for the two of them. It might not seem a very subtle or clever joke to the likes of you and me, but they both seemed to find it very funny. Some part of me did find it heartwarming to see one so old and one so young laughing together innocently at such a silly thing.

They had other peculiar jokes. The Baandari pedlar - Keshjo was his name - would tell Kimiya, “Little One, don’t ever go off to your svatur-ribara.” There is a play on words there between languages - in Banthan Yokudan, which we use only for important ceremonial occasions, “svatur-ribara” sounds very close to “savatiri-bara-ha”, which means “in-laws’ abode” or “place of residence after marriage”, depending on which part of Hammerfell you’re in. In Ta’agra - which I don’t pretend to speak, but over the years I suppose I picked up a few snippets of the language from Keshjo myself - “svatur-ribara” roughly means “the House of the Rising Sun”. And what _that_ in turn means is “the house from which there is no escape”, which is to say, a prison - as I understand it, if a Baandari pedlar were to be within a house when the sun rises, that would be an indication that the pedlar has been arrested and thrown into jail.

But we were rather of a conservative stripe, and so we hadn’t taken the time to educate our Kimiya about such matters. So, even while understanding the meaning of “savatiri-bara-ha” she couldn’t understand what Keshjo meant - and yet to be silent and give no reply would have been utterly against her very nature. Therefore, she would garrulously turn around and say, “And are you going off to your svatur-ribara?” Whereupon old Keshjo would unsheathe his claws and rake the air in front of him in a show of martial ferocity, and snarl at an imaginary foe.

“Argh! I will escape, like so! And so! Hrarrh!” And Kimiya, picturing the discomfited in-laws scattering this way and that, would break out into peals of delighted laughter.

Now, I have always been a very rooted sort of individual. I have my family business to manage, and I like to think that I have done well by the inheritance my parents passed down to me. I don’t have much of an interest in the affairs of the world; I only worry, for example, that the Second Treaty of Stros M’kai would affect our linen and flax imports, and simultaneously drive down the prices of woven cotton. But it was refreshing to sit and converse with Keshjo every now and then, as I took my ease with a cup of tea brewed from his Samar Pekoe. He would speak longingly of his homeland of Pelletine, and in my mind’s eye I would see things, places and people as he described them.

Kimiya’s father is a skittish and suspicious sort of man. He objected to the presence of Keshjo the Baandari pedlar. He cannot dispel from his mind, despite the experience of his life (which isn’t great), the notion that the world is overrun with thieves, bandits, drunkards, Thalmor justiciars and untrustworthy Imperials. And of course, he had a fixed notion that all Khajiit were scoundrels and rogues. He repeatedly enjoined me to keep our daughter away from the Baandari. Whenever I tried to laugh off his suspicions he would launch into his usual spiel of questions. Were the Khajiit not known for a thieving race, liable to take every possession not nailed down? Were the majority of thieves not of the feline persuasion? Were there not laws in some cities all across Tamriel prohibiting Khajiit from entry? Did those laws have no basis whatsoever? Is it so very impossible for one of the notorious Baandari to engage in kidnapping?

I had to concede that it was not entirely impossible, but it did not seem at all probable to me. Keshjo would come either in the morning, the afternoon or the evening; whenever his lanky form approached, the bits of cloth flapping in the breeze, Kimiya would run out and greet her friend joyfully. If one squinted, one would see a silhouette of his tall Beastfolk frame, arms and claws outstretched, and one might get a little frightened. But my heart would light up as Kimiya and her friend laughed together, and the jokes flew swiftly between them, unequal in age though they were.

One morning I was standing outside the mill, talking to a tax assessor as I recall - the swine - when suddenly we heard a commotion from further up the street. After some time, I looked, and I saw Keshjo with his wrists chained up, flanked on either side by some burly guardsmen who were marching him along.

I ran up to them and remonstrated with the guardsmen. From them, and from Keshjo himself, I learned that someone had owed some money to Keshjo for some sundry goods, and tried to lie his way out of the debt. Keshjo had, in true Baandari fashion, proceeded to take something of commensurate value by way of payment. He was, in the event, discovered. In the ensuing brawl, Keshjo had accidentally dealt the other party a mortal wound.

Then Kimiya was running out into the street, calling out. “O Baandari, Baandari pedlar!”

I could see the old cat’s face change, in swift stages. His eyes lit up, and his ears went straight with pleasure. Then his whiskers drooped, as did his ears, and his face was downcast. He blinked twice.

He did not have his pedlar’s crates with him, so Kimiya skipped over the joke about the mammoth or bull netch contained therein. Instead, she said, “And are you going off to your svatur-ribara?”

“Yes, this one is going there now, Little One,” he said, smiling. But Kimiya’s eyes went eagerly to his hands and feet - and perceived the chains on them. And she was silent, and did not speak.

He ruefully raised his arms. “Ah, this one would break out of the svatur-ribara, but as you can see, Little One, this one’s hands are tied!”

We later heard he had been convicted of fatal assault not amounting to murder, and sentenced to some years in prison. Living at home, working at the mill, doing all our accustomed tasks, we gradually allowed the memory of Keshjo to fade from our minds. Kimiya grew up a strong and healthy woman, like all women in our lineage - the path of an Ansei was not for her, and she had truthfully only a middling head for business, but she had developed a fine singing voice and a penchant for telling tales in her own evocative manner. It became apparent to me that she had a calling very different from my own. And watching her grow up, I confess I did not give very much thought to how it was like for someone like a Baandari to be spending years behind iron bars, seeing the sun rise on that barred window every single day.

The years went by. Kimiya found her match, and the marriage was arranged with all due decorum. Soon, our pride and joy would leave, and our house would darken, while her savatiri-bara-ha would correspondingly brighten with her presence.

And so this morning was a beautiful day. The sky seemed awash with golden love. My daughter was getting married. I was as proud as I could be. And yet, there was a rumbling of storm clouds on the far horizon, promising a rare thunderstorm later in the evening. It felt to me as though the storm clouds represented my wistful melancholy hovering at the edges of my joy, the gloominess of imminent separation.

The family house was a riot. Raucous shouting filled the air. For the entire day I had not a moment of peace, and soon I had developed a headache. I stepped outside away from the hubbub to get a few moments of respite.

And then I saw him. Saw them - he was not alone. Ragged Keshjo stood there, conversing with a strange figure - a powerfully-built woman armed and armored to the teeth, like an adventurer or mercenary, wearing a horned helmet of some kind. She raised her hand and pointed at my house, and at me, and made some urgent waving gestures as if shooing him away. Keshjo turned, saw me, and made his way over quickly, with some haste in his step. Behind him, the strange woman turned away, and I saw no more of her.

He was changed. Much changed. He had no crates strapped to his back - he had only a small satchel by his side. His clothes, if they could be called that, were filthy rags. His former vigor seemed wholly gone. But when he smiled, I knew him.

“Keshjo,” I said, warmly. “It is you! How are you? Where have you come from?”

“From the prison.”

“They have let you out? Your sentence is over?”

“No. I escaped. I had help.”

His words took me aback. He was speaking very directly, very forthrightly, which his kind only sometimes do. I believe they consider it rude to say “I”. But he was speaking as though he had not spoken for many years and was out of practice - which was probably the case.

I was taken aback, also, by the stark fact of what he had said. If he had just escaped from prison, the guards would likely be out searching for him. And if he had led the pursuit to my front door, on the day my Kimiya was to be married…

I hurriedly glanced behind him, and all around. There were no signs of pursuit. But that could change any moment, I thought. I said to him, “I’m sorry, Keshjo, but… as you can see, we are rather busy at the moment.”

He seemed about to say more, but I rather strongly said, “This really isn’t a good time, Keshjo. Perhaps you should go, for now. But stay safe, I do hope you do.”

He seemed about to comply. But he hesitated a little. “May I see your Little One again?” he said, sounding a little hoarse - from thirst, no doubt.

Little One? It seemed as though he thought Kimiya would be unchanged from those long-gone days - still that little girl who would come running at his approach, calling out “O Baandari, Baandari pedlar!” upon which their old merry banter would resume.

“Please,” I said, “today I’m afraid you can’t see anyone.”

He looked crestfallen. He looked down at his paw - and I saw that he had a handful of nuts and berries in his palm. “This one brought these for the Little One,” he told me. “Please will you give them to her on this one’s behalf.”

I took them, and then reached into my belt pouch for some coins. But he clutched at my hands. “No - do not give this one any money. This one shall always be grateful to you. This one, too, has family - I too have a daughter, back in Pelletine, back in a little village I know. It is with her in mind that I have come with this gift for your daughter. I have not come to trade with you, honored matron.”

From somewhere about his person, he withdrew a piece of vellum -- he must have secreted it about his person, and kept it for lo these many years. He showed it to me.

On it, I saw a single smudged paw-print - the paw had been rubbed with some soot or ink, and pressed upon the vellum. Every year, Keshjo had come to our little corner of Hegathe with this memento close to his heart, as if the small touch of that little paw brought warmth to his huge, homesick breast. My eyes swam at the sight of that paw print. I forgot then that I was a well-to-do owner of a textile mill in Hegathe, and he a pariah, an outcast member of the Wandering Litter, the reviled and despised Baandari pedlars. What - was he not also a parent of a child, one whom he had not seen for many long years? Was he not a father just as I am a mother?

At once I sent for Kimiya, from the chambers where she was being prepared. I stridently overrode the vociferous objections with my own. I simply refused to listen to them.

Kimiya came out dressed in her bridal wear, and stood shy and confused.

Keshjo stood dumbfounded before her. He opened his mouth once or twice - it seemed he could not bring himself to greet her in the old familiar way. This person standing before him was wholly changed from the one he had known, after all. But at last he smiled, and he said, “Little One, are you going to your svatur-ribara?”

But now she knew the layered meanings of that joke, and she could only blush, and look away. And she, my Kimiya with the silver tongue and golden laughter, skillful trader of barbs, always ready with a sharp word for the cruel and a kind one for the downtrodden, could not find a thing to say.

Before long it was time for Kimiya to withdraw to her chambers. I stood outside with Keshjo, who looked away into the faraway east. Behind us, the festive music kept on playing, but I knew he was hearing the winds blow across the plains of Pelletine, and the sounds of the village he once knew, where lived a daughter who likely had forgotten the face of her father.

I pressed my entire pouch of coins into his unwilling hands. “Keshjo, go home. Go back to your daughter. Run quickly - the guards will be after you. Do not let yourself be captured again. By your blessed reunion with your daughter, my Kimiya’s wedding will also be blessed. Go.”

He is gone now, but my heart aches still. May the HoonDing make way for my friend, the pedlar of the Baandari!


End file.
